As part of my job I contribute to the planning and delivery of projects for the young people, although I'm involved in many of these I am going to write about one particular project that I planned, delivered and reviewed recently.
Intro Info
The project was to be delivered to a targetted group of young people who were already in an established art group, the majority of the young people involved had special needs. Although I had been working with the group for a while before the project this was the first time that I had taken the lead role. The final product of the project was to be displayed in an exhibition as part of the Youth Arts Festival of this year.
Before planning I knew that I wanted to come up with a photography based project, as this is my speciality, and it was something the group hadn't done before. I decided that I would create a stop frame animation of some kind with the group, I then planned a skeleton outline of what the project would consist of, sort of like a rough proposal to take to my supervisor.
After these rough decisions were made by me I had a planning meeting to collaborate with the youth worker incharge of the art group (who also happens to be my supervisor!) to discuss the needs of the group and to better shape the project around an issue or topic that they would benefit exploring and learning about through informal education (in this case art!) in this meeting we discussed the behaviour within the group and decided that teamwork would be a major aspect of the project, so for the project to succeed the group would have to work together, we then wrote up a provisional schedule together.
The next step was to present the idea to the group and get their ideas and input into the project to make it the most enjoyable experience for them. The collaborative chosen theme for the project was the consequences of lying and it was agreed that the project would be a combination of the group's traditional art based skills (like cutting, sticking and drawing) as well as learning new photography skills and using DSLR cameras. In this same session I facilitated the creation of a storyline for the project and took down a list of things the group thought that they might need (it was all manageable stuff that was easy to get hold of, which was handy as I had no cash budget for the project!)
After this session I went away and put together a session plan for me to work to and to present to any other workers who needed to know what I was upto! The project was scheduled to last about 6 weeks from start to finish and included some traditional group art in the form of creating all characters and 'sets' for the animation out of different papers and materials, which was discussed and organised within the group in the presentation session I wrote about above -I paired the young people up for this one!
The Sessions
I found out that the lead worker, that all of the young people were more familiar with, was away for training for some of the sessions that I would be working on and that she couldn't find anyone to cover for her and support me in the delivery of the certain session but I decided that I would give working as the only worker with this group a trial, something that I'd never done before so I found this very exciting and I knew that it would be challenging! There's always other staff in the building that could support me if needs be, like security.
On the artistic front it was aimed that in the first session that the group would have a hands on demonstration of basic operations of the cameras we would be using and then start the collaborative production of the characters and 'sets' for the final animation. On the underlying youth work front I was going to use this artwork as a prompt to start a discussion with the group about when people lie and why they choose to do so.
I taught one young person who has an interest in cameras how the ones they would be using worked and asked her to assist me in teaching the wider group, this went well and the group all took some photos on the cameras, whilst doing this the group took it in turns to tell the rest of the group one lie that they had told in the past.
By the second half of this session an arguement had broken out over who could play music from their phone, this put an atmosphere onto the session and caused the discussion I had started to break down and the group started to bicker at eachother, which spiralled and dragged in every possible topic to argue about imaginable! I did everything I could to calm things down, taking individuals to one side, addressing the whole group but by now everyone had got so worked up I thought it would be best to close the session early to let emotions die down, the production of the 'sets' had started so I was pretty happy with the outcome of the session regardless of the early closure.
After the session I spoke with my supervisor about what had happened in the session and why I had closed it early and she agreed that I had done the right thing and also suggested some other approaches and techniques that I could try out to challenge these kinds of situations. I was also told that these kinds of situations happen alot at first and that you have to find alternative ways to deal with them. The result of this was me saying that I'd give independently working with the group another couple of weeks!
In reflection of the last session I realised that having a strict schedule wouldn't work with this group so I decided that from now on my aims for certian sessions would just be a guideline to allow room for solving group problems that would arise.
In light of the early closure of the last session I decided that before starting the next session I would have a sit down chat with the group to discuss what had happened last week and what would happen if those things were to continue into this week. I did this and then, to address the issues of last week and to explore other issues that could arise, I facilitated creating some group rules with the group, seperate from the general rules that had been discussed with them before, these rules were agreed by everyone and were only to be put into practice when I ran the group independently, this went well, working on the group members personal development in problem solving! I also got every group member that attended to think about why they come to the group and write it down so that it could be shared with the group, this highlighted how much they value coming to the group.
To sort out the music problem it was agreed that I would bring down the stereo from upstairs and choose the radio station myself.
After these initial hiccups the sessions ran relatively smoothly, with issues cropping up here and there but everything manageable down to the group rules, agreed and signed by the group, discussions and regular meetings between me and my supervisor. The group completed creating all of the sets, props and characters collaboratively and worked on the photographing of the animation in threes. Discussions on lying and it's consequences really worked too and it was obvious that they were thought provoking for the young people to explore, think about and empathise with, this improving personal development in empathy and promoting think before you speak, all valuable skills!
Some members of the group were not confident with having their voices recorded for the animation so I asked them to think of something arty that they could do that would still fit with our theme, they chose posters -which I thought was great so I let them work on that idea, aslong as they had a go at being recorded, even if they decided their recordings were not to be used!
The final stop frame was put together by the young people, facilitated by me, it was just down to me to tweak small edits that the group wanted and to convert the animation to a movie format ready for display, the animation was now completed by the group, so I then took the finished product away ready for submission to the exhibition show reel, which resulted in me doing some online work to submit to the person who was making the show reel, this causing some emails to let me know how to submit things!
The final major part of the project was reviewing it with the group - I was going to do this by video recording them but after working closely, both independently and with the lead worker there, I decided that the confidence issues from within the group would cause my method of evaluation to be more of a distraction and a chore for the group instead of it being enjoyable so in the end I spoke to the lead worker and arranged for one of the sessions to be the screening of the final film, which would then turn into going around the group and asking them to tell the group what they thought of the project, what their favourite part was and what they didn't like, this worked.
Below is a testimonial about my collaboration and the project from my supervisor.
The group titled their stop frame "Why Lie?" and it was a success in the festival, I have planned more issue based photography projects that I am aiming to deliver to other groups in the near future.
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